Joshua J. Friedman: DOJ unseals indictment against doctor accused of stealing private health records from Texas Children's Hospital to leak to Chris Rufo to attack gender-affirming care

DOJ unseals indictment against doctor accused of stealing private health records from Texas Children's Hospital to leak to Chris Rufo to attack gender-affirming care

Doctor accused of illegally obtaining Texas Children's patient informationwww.houstonchronicle.com Dr. Eithan Haim has described himself as a whistleblower who sought to expose the Texas Children's Hospital transgender medicine program.

If you haven't been following this case, I regret to inform you that Haim's cause has been championed by Tucker Carlson, Dan Crenshaw, and Bari Weiss's Free Press (in an article written by Emily Yoffe), and Haim has crowdfunded $620,000 thus far to support his legal defense

Eithan Haim gets a $10,000 appearance bond (still no indictment released—USATX public affairs apologized and said they'll work on getting it for tomorrow) BOND: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us... CONDITIONS OF RELEASE: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

READ THE INDICTMENT of Dr. Eithan Haim, who DOJ has charged with four counts of violating HIPAA by leaking stolen patient records from Texas Children's Hospital to Chris Rufo to attack gender-affirming care www.documentcloud.org/documents/24...

"In or around May 14 through May 16, 2023, HAIM and Person1 talked on the phone numerous times. On or about May 16, 2023, Person1 published HIPAA protected information obtained by HAIM via X (formerly known as Twitter) and other online media outlets."

"In furtherance of his malicious intent, HAIM obtained unauthorized HIPAA protected information and intentionally contacted a media outlet to grossly mischaracterize TCH’s medical procedures in order to damage the reputation of TCH and its physicians and to promote his own personal agenda."

What an absolute piece of shit.

Can TCH sue him as well?

Wait, this seems to indicate that rufo was coordinating, inciting, or leading the theft of medical records

Keyword: “seems”. I don’t know. I may be all wrong.

Does it? I'm not immediately finding the suggestion that Haim and Rufo talked before Haim took the records

I don't really see that. The unauthorized access is put on Apr 26, 23 and the calls to Rufo are May 14-16.

I don't think the timeline in the indictment makes that clear (possibly intentionally). We get Haim accessing records in April and talking on the phone with Rufo in May before Rufo published on May 16, but there's no indication of how/when they initially got into contact with each other.

No it doesn’t. It just says he gave the materials to Rufo.

So does this mean that Rufo can be hit with terror/RICO violation charges? If so, that would be a wonderful consequence to have befalling him in particular.

Oh PLEASE fucking tell me they fully plan on indicting Rufo, they seemingly conspired together to do this.

@abtnatural.bsky.social

Thanks. So what's the story, did OUSA email this to you? This is pretty weird, after the clerk unsealing most docs without entering any record of having authorization to unseal anything, and now a still-sealed doc is loose. But I guess it's pretty clear that it's all supposed to be public.

Yup! I have to assume it's unsealed but that fact hasn't yet yet made it to the dockets, but who knows

Lock this creep up. If he ever practices medicine, the system is broken.

🌎 🧑‍🚀 🔫 🧑‍🚀 Always has been

What’s the word on aiding and abetting for rufo

"Well-connected," probably..

NYT Opinion columnist

I hope he gets locked up for a very long time. Leaking medical records of children is the lowest form of scum

I’m going to assume that DOJ is indicting competently.

Is the money he raised on the fake MAGA GoFundMe site "proceeds traceable to such violations"? This guy basically traded a medical career for a career as a professionally-aggrieved rightwing nut.

Can Rufo be charged with receiving stolen patient information?

Doesn't this implicate CFAA, too?

I suspect not, because I'm guessing he eventually persuaded someone to grant him access, as opposed to stealing a colleague's login. If true, I don't believe he'd be liable under CFAA.

I know CFAA stuff has been in flux, but I thought unauthorized access to a part of a system could be a violation even where a person has front end authorization to the system itself

Filthy bigots make me sick. I hope this guy faces some real justice here, things like this harm many innocent people and kids and this man (and Rufo) need to face some consequences.

If I remember my HIPAA days: -Haim won't go to jail for HIPAA directly -He'll probably get smacked hard financially -Dunno if he ever got a license, but there's 40+ states out there who are desperate for doctors. He'll find a job somewhere. (cont)

-TCU can't be sued by the offended parties -Only the Feds can hold TCU accountable for HIPAA violations, though state law can be applied. -But the indictment appears to go out of its way to hold TCU harmless But yeah, Haim's not going to jail.

My assumptions in my post were wrong, but I'm not deleting it because I don't want to lose the links provided by the well informed Dr. Williams.

People are sentenced to prison. Given sentencing examples and this case, I would say that it is likely he will do time given: - The number of charts accessed - Conspiracy - Malicious intent People get probation for accessing based on "curiosity," not so much here www.justice.gov/usao-sdia/pr...

Des Moines Man Sentenced to 27 Months in Prison for Criminal HIPAA Violationswww.justice.gov Des Moines, Iowa – A Des Moines man was sentenced today to 27 months in prison following his pleas of guilty to two counts of a federal indictment charging conspiracy to wrongfully obtain and disclose...

As the defendant was 1) A provider in a residency program and 2) A provider in the region, it is very usual for access to be granted. TCH may get spanked for not monitoring access - it happens. Not executing a viable audit process, which would have caught this, is a violation of the rules.

He is currently part of a health system in Greenville, TX

For how long now that the DOJ has filed is the question.

Here's one with a 27 month sentence www.justice.gov/usao-sdia/pr...

Des Moines Man Sentenced to 27 Months in Prison for Criminal HIPAA Violationswww.justice.gov Des Moines, Iowa – A Des Moines man was sentenced today to 27 months in prison following his pleas of guilty to two counts of a federal indictment charging conspiracy to wrongfully obtain and disclose...

The law provides for a sentence of up to 10 years. Probation is usual, but depending on scope, intent, remorse, etc. bsky.app/profile/drpw...

Another, to show the range of sentences The point being, this is one of the easiest cases to prosecute due to the built in digital footprint system. They know where you went specifically, how long you were there and when you did it. Each. Time. www.justice.gov/usao-ndia/pr...

Former Cedar Rapids Hospital Employee Sentenced for Accessing Ex-Boyfriend’s Medical Recordswww.justice.gov

I stand corrected. Thank you for this.

So any bets on how fast Trump would pardon him?

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